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In just two days this month, the new government of Syria was handed a pair of major victories toward reversing the country’s longstanding pariah status in the US-dominated global order.

At the NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump announced the removal of Syria from the list of states accused of sponsoring terrorism. Trump’s decision will ease decades of sanctions that have crippled Syria’s economy and helped oust Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. It also marks a public relations victory for Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the insurgent leader who replaced Assad in Damascus. Al-Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a former ISIS deputy leader and the founding leader of the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, both designated by the US as terrorist organizations.

The following day, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) gave Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda offshoot another stamp of international approval. The Executive Council of the world’s top chemical watchdog restored the voting privileges that Syria lost in 2021 over allegations that the Assad government used chemical weapons and hid elements of its arsenal.

The two decisions have a direct tie. The widespread narrative that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people was invoked to justify the US-led regime change war that ultimately led to Assad’s overthrow.

Yet while the Trump administration and OPCW are granting Syria’s new rulers a clean slate, not everyone is ready to turn the page, or accept the conventional story about the former government’s purported chemical attacks.

The OPCW leadership faces continued scrutiny over a cover-up that calls the Syria chemical weapons allegations, and the OPCW’s own independence and scientific integrity, into question. During this month’s session of the Executive Council, the Brazilian government lodged a rare formal protest over the OPCW’s manipulation of an investigation into an alleged April 2018 chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma.

At issue for the Brazilians was the suppression of a critical finding in the OPCW’s Douma probe. As I reported in May, the OPCW, after years of stonewalling, recently acknowledged concealing the “highly protected” assessment of German military toxicologists who ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of dozens of deaths in Douma.

The toxicologists’ censored findings, along with other buried evidence, undermined the OPCW’s public claims that there was a chlorine attack in Douma, and that the Syrian government was responsible. The suppressed evidence instead pointed to a false flag, as one of the toxicologists even speculated. After keeping this from the public, the OPCW published reports on the Douma incident that aligned with the first-term Trump administration and its British and French allies. These states bombed Syria in April 2018 over what they alleged was a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma.

In Brazil’s National Statement to the Council, Ambassador Fernando Simas Magalhães argued that the OPCW cover-up calls into question the Douma investigation’s legitimacy. “Recent findings,” Magalhães said, “...have pointed to the exclusion of expert toxicological opinions from the final Douma report, which may have had an impact on the robustness of the conclusions of the investigation.”

The “recent findings” refer to a legal case at the Administrative Tribunal of the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO). The tribunal ruled in favor of Dr. Brendan Whelan, a former OPCW inspector who challenged the manipulation of the Douma probe. During those legal proceedings, the OPCW inadvertently acknowledged the very act that Whelan had been protesting as a Douma team member since 2018: that the Organisation was guilty of scientific censorship.

The Brazilian government’s high-level rebuke is not the first time that the OPCW has been challenged over the suppression of the toxicological findings. Yet each time the issue has been raised, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias has refused to even acknowledge it, let alone respond.

Brazil’s intervention is unique because it was made during a formal session of the OPCW’s policy-making organ, the Executive Council. Accordingly, it had to be recorded in the Organisation’s official records and posted publicly, at Brazil’s request. After years in which the OPCW evaded questions about the toxicologists’ buried findings, the issue is now, for the first time, permanently memorialized on the chemical watchdog’s own website. Arias has yet to offer a response.

In his statement, the Brazilian ambassador also framed the credibility crisis inside the OPCW over the Douma cover-up and its broader Syria mandate as not just the responsibility of the Technical Secretariat (TS), the working body headed by Director-General Arias, but principally of the Member States of the OPCW and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC):

At present, [the OPCW] faces the challenge of sustaining effectiveness and confidence in an increasingly complex and polarised environment. This responsibility lies primarily with member states, with the support of the TS. One area where these pressures are most clearly reflected is the Syria file.

In other words, Brazil argued, it is the Secretariat’s paymasters, the Member States, which must ensure the Organisation’s credibility.

At a UN Security Council briefing in June, China’s ambassador similarly argued that the OPCW’s activities in Syria “have become a hallmark of the OPCW being politicized, seriously jeopardizing its authority and effectiveness.” Echoing Brazil’s criticism, China also suggested that the OPCW has failed to “maintain an objective and impartial position” in its Syria probes, which risk failing to “stand the test of history.”

Brazil is well-placed to challenge the OPCW’s politicization. The watchdog’s founding director-general, José Bustani, is a veteran Brazilian diplomat who personally resisted another attempt to instrumentalize the organization for a US-led regime change campaign in the Middle East. In 2002, the Bush administration engineered Bustani’s ouster for trying to facilitate Iraq’s entry into the Chemical Weapons Convention, which impeded the White House’s plans for war. Bustani stood his ground even after then-US Under Secretary of State John Bolton threatened to harm his children. Nearly two decades later, Bustani tried to testify at the UN in protest of the Douma cover-up, but the US and its allies blocked him from speaking. By contrast, these same states have continued to heap praise on Arias as he’s joined them in stonewalling accountability for the Douma deception.

Bustani and former senior UN official Hans von Sponeck have spearheaded the Berlin Group 21, an initiative to address the OPCW scandal. Ahead of the Executive Council, the group sent a letter to each state party urging that “the issues raised by the OPCW’s own scientists be addressed in an open, transparent and objective manner.” By insisting on accountability for the manipulated Douma investigation, Brazil is refusing to let the OPCW fail the test of history.

Pre-order "Their Blood, Our Bullets"

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Shortly before returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump criticized the exiting president, Joe Biden, for letting Ukraine fire long-range US missiles into Russia. “Why are we doing that?” Trump complained. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.”

Just as his campaign pledge of “no new wars” gave way to a regime-change war on Iran, Trump’s professed aversion to a US-fueled escalation in Ukraine is no more. At this month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia. With the Russians “finding it more difficult to defend their own airspace,” Rubio explained, this will “create the space now to negotiate the end of this war.” Added Trump: “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”

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My debut book, Their Blood, Our Bullets: The Hidden Story of the US–Russia War for Ukraine, published by OR Books, is now available for pre-order. I have been working on this project for 3+ years, and am very excited to finally get it out. I am particularly grateful to my Substack subscribers: without your support, this book would not have been possible.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this bombshell investigation, years in the making, Aaron Maté exposes Washington’s professed support for Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy as a sham.

Building on the rigorous, fearless reporting that has established him as a leading independent journalist, Maté irrefutably documents how the US and its NATO allies have meddled in Ukraine with the real aim of weakening and destabilizing Russia.

In pursuit of this aggressive geopolitical design, successive US administrations exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions and sabotaged every chance for compromise while relentlessly backing Russia into a corner. Gambling with the global economy and risking nuclear war, US planners then provoked and prolonged an illegal Russian invasion that has had catastrophic consequences—for the Ukrainian people above all.

Washington’s cynical foreign policy did not just detonate peace in Europe but also deranged politics at home. Controversies around Russia and Ukraine played a pivotal role in three consecutive US presidential campaigns, driving the national hysteria known as “Russiagate” as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

With Trump’s re-election pledge to broker peace still elusive, Maté presents a groundbreaking account of how the Russia–Ukraine conflict came to be, and how a brutal proxy war with existential stakes for humanity can finally be resolved.

Pre-order “Their Blood, Our Bullets”, at 15% off, via OR Books.

A sweeping victory by a progressive slate in New York’s Democratic primary – Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier – adds significant momentum to the political movement of their chief endorser, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, and his populist, pro-Palestine message.

Bernie Sanders’ crushing 2020 primary loss to Joe Biden, which many progressives (myself included) believed he would take handily, offered a sobering warning about extrapolating national political lessons from coastal leftist enclaves. But the Biden administration then went on to endorse Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, and paid a political price for it in the 2024 election. Last night’s results continue that trend.

Lander’s victory over Daniel Goldman, a Levi Strauss heir and cable news mainstay, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Goldman rose to prominence in late 2019, when he served as the Democrats’ lead attorney in their first impeachment of President Trump. Right after the collapse of Russiagate, Democrats doubled down on their Cold War playbook by targeting Trump for freezing a weapons shipment to Ukraine while he pressured it to assist with his political vendettas. In a series of columns for the Nation magazine, I warned that Democrats were hurting their election chances by centering Cold War dogma over pocketbook issues. “It is difficult to recall a time in recent memory when liberal US politics has been centered on issues so divorced from reality and from issues that matter to people’s lives,” I wrote.

That is no longer the case. The ascent of neoconservative Democrats like Goldman during the Russiagate/Ukrainegate era pushed the party further to the right. That shift became politically untenable after October 7^th, when voters saw party leaders from Biden on down defend the indefensible in Gaza. In recent years, Goldman has tried to offset his hawkish foreign policy by embracing popular domestic positions like Medicare For All. But his support for Israel sealed his political fate.

During the primary campaign, Goldman invoked his role in Trump’s first impeachment. Once an issue that riveted MSNBC audiences, it failed to land in a time of economic stagnation and a live-streamed genocide. Tellingly, the cable news voice most visibly alarmed at Goldman’s defeat last night was none other than Fox News’ chief Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity, who choked up while reporting the news of what he called “a pretty scary transformation... in the Democratic Party.”

The transformation is not exclusive to Democrats. Two longtime Trump allies, former Fox news host Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have both said in recent days that they can no longer support the Republican Party. Both have broken with Trump over his support for Israel and his failed regime change war on Iran.

Back in 2016, Trump appealed to a winning margin of swing state voters by criticizing costly regime change wars. He disingenuously repeated that message in 2024, capitalizing on Biden’s proxy war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. Trump has long abandoned any claim to the pro-peace mantle. By contrast, along with their support for Palestinian freedom, two of the winning Mamdani-backed candidates, Chevalier and Valdez, have criticized the US role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and advocated diplomacy to end it. If one primary night in deep-blue New York City is any guide, an authentic version of anti-war populism now has a political home.

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Direct talks between the US and Iran, the first since the Trump administration and Israel launched their failed regime change war in February, have ended in what Qatari and Pakistani mediators describe as “encouraging progress.” The two sides have agreed to open a “de-confliction cell” to enforce a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel has killed more than 4,000 people and displaced over 1.5 million since March.

Seen from Washington and Tel Aviv, the enduring capability of Hezbollah to resist Israeli occupation, be it in Lebanon or in Palestine, remains a threat to a broader peace deal. As UN Ambassador Mike Waltz recently put it, the US wants to help Lebanon “rid” itself of the “cancer” that is Hezbollah.

Trump and his ally Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to advance that goal by overthrowing Hezbollah’s chief ally in Tehran. Because that failed, Trump has advocated tapping into a US-led regime change campaign that did succeed: Syria, now under the rule of the former al-Qaeda affiliate that toppled Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

“I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they do a better job,” Trump said last week. Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa has declined the opportunity. The new Syrian government, presiding over a war-ravaged country, is in no position to open a new conflict with Hezbollah, which intervened in the Syria dirty war on behalf of Assad’s government. Even if al-Sharaa wanted to now settle an old score, the Israeli military did not help matters by wiping out much of Syria’s military assets after it helped overthrow Assad.

While impractical, the fact that Trump can even voice such a proposal speaks to why the region has seen so much turmoil. From the Trump administration’s point of view, Hezbollah, which has a large domestic constituency and whose political wing is a part of the largest political bloc in the Lebanese parliament, is a “cancer.” By contrast, the new Syrian government, ruled by a former leader of ISIS and Al Qaeda who was long on the US terrorism list, is now a welcome ally available to do the US and Israel’s dirty work. So why is the former deemed to be a “cancer”?

A declassified 2003 State Department report (PDF below) that preceded the US-led regime change war on Syria highlighted the priorities in Washington that endure today. The Syrian government, the report acknowledged, has “provided tangible and beneficial CT [counter-terrorism] cooperation, in particular with respect to information-sharing.” Damascus also gave “high priority” to investigating threats against the US military throughout the region. Despite subsequent US claims that Syria helped terrorist groups cross over to target American forces in Iraq, Syria even “[took] measures to improve security along its border with Iraq” and was “fully cooperative” with US requests to inspect it.

Yet there was one problem.

“However,” the report complained, the Syrian government “has refused to cooperate in CT efforts against Palestinian and Lebanese groups which it considers to be engaged in legitimate resistance of illegal occupation.” Noting that Syria – like the United States – is fearful of Al Qaeda, the report added:

...Syrian officials continue to distinguish between terrorism and what it considers to be “legitimate” armed resistance undertaken by people living in occupied territories for the sake of national liberation. For this reason, Syria does not recognize Hizballah or the Palestinian rejectionist groups as terrorist organizations, and thus refuses to take actions against them consonant with the actions it has taken against other terrorist organizations/individuals.

While refusing to take military action against Palestinian and Lebanese forces, Syria meanwhile took “a lead role” in regional fora to “formulate a unified Arab/Muslim position that Palestinian and Lebanese groups fighting Israeli occupation are not terrorists.” It also used its position at the United Nations “to encourage international support for Palestinian national aspirations and denounce Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories as ‘state terrorism.’”

Even though the US acknowledged that Syria provided “tangible and beneficial cooperation” against Al Qaeda, its support for Hezbollah and Palestinian groups who seek “national liberation” was enough to mark it for regime change. The US was so devoted to that goal that it was willing to help install an Al Qaeda offshoot in Assad’s place. And that successful regime change helped turn US-Israeli sights toward Tehran. As the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank, recently gloated, “the current U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran would have been even more difficult if Assad were still in power.”

The Iranian government has deterred that campaign, and now insists that Israel cease its aggression in Lebanon as well. For the Trump administration or any future one, a broader peace deal will hinge on whether the presence of movements that support Palestinian and Lebanese liberation can be tolerated, or seen as a cancer worthy of many more regional victims.

2003 Syria Ct Report

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The US and Iran have declared a halt to military hostilities, at least for the time being, in the war of aggression that Donald Trump launched alongside Israel more than three months ago. Their tentative agreement stands to restore the status quo ante but do little else. Along with an end to the US-Israeli bombing campaign, Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump will cease his blockade of Iranian waters. If Iran receives anything from the US in the short term, it will likely be a token amount of the tens of billions of dollars in stolen assets, as well as limited sanctions relief on the export of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.

The main issues for both countries — Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and crippling US sanctions on Iran’s economy — will be deferred to follow-up talks. It is there that Trump will remain constrained by Washington’s hawkish agenda since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and that Trump escalated since first taking office. Trump went to war in February even though Iran had agreed to harsher restrictions on its nuclear enrichment program than under the JCPOA that Trump tore up. Just because Trump failed to overthrow Iran’s government, it does not mean that he will suddenly turn around and respect its sovereignty. That would force him not only to end a war, but to end a decades-old regime change and destabilization campaign that has the support of both major political party establishments and a powerful Israel lobby.

In a pair of media appearances today, Vice President JD Vance inadvertently exposed the hardline stance that will prevent a lasting peace. Speaking to CBS News, Vance tied the “unsanctioning” of Iran’s economy solely to Tehran making “long-term commitments on the nuclear program.” Yet in an interview with ABC News, Vance named a second condition: that Iran “stop funding terrorist activities all over the Middle East.” This would mean Iran abandoning its regional allies, or “proxies” in establishment parlance. But this is a non-starter for Tehran, which is ideologically committed to resisting US-Israeli control of the region and has a defense strategy that, in the absence of a nuclear deterrent, relies on a network of “forward defense.”

Iran’s commitment to its allies is why Israel bombed Lebanon just as the deal was being finalized, to provoke Iran into derailing it. Trump publicly lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and told him to “stand down.” But in the absence of a lasting peace deal that respects Iranian sovereignty, not to mention the Palestinian self-determination that Iran and Hezbollah are targeted for championing, Israel will have ample opportunities to continue acting as a spoiler. It has already refused to withdraw from Lebanon, despite Iran’s insistence on ending that conflict as part of any deal. Israel’s security doctrine, Defense Minister Israel Katz explained, “strive[s] for decisive outcomes rather than compromises and concessions.” In other words, Israel is structurally averse to diplomacy.

In his memoir, veteran US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad recounts a flare-up while serving in the Reagan White House that could just as well apply today. At the time, Iran had reached a ceasefire with the US-backed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, ending a devastating eight-year war. To open a new era in US-Iran relations, Khalilzad proposed that the US lift sanctions on Tehran. His superiors disagreed. At a meeting of top officials, Secretary of State George Shultz chided Khalilzad with a stern message: “Zal, this makes great geopolitical sense but no political sense.”

Nearly four decades later, an effort by Trump to reach a similar accommodation with Iran would make infinitely more geopolitical and political sense. With its leverage over the global economy via the Strait of Hormuz and ability to inflict damage on US military assets, Iran can impose costs on Washington. In this round of US-initiated violence, that deterrent capability led to a US strategic defeat. Heading into the midterms, Trump could still pay a political price for the economic damage that his failed war caused for everyday voters, and his open indifference to their hardship.

What makes both geopolitical and political sense matters little to a bipartisan Beltway establishment committed to US-Israeli dominance in West Asia. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, not only backed Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza but refused to even re-enter the JCPOA negotiated by the administration in which he served as Vice President.

Before this temporary deal, Trump stalled for weeks and repeatedly reneged on terms that he had agreed to, including on the return of stolen Iranian assets. He was presumably hoping that Iran’s economy would collapse under the weight of his blockade and crippling sanctions. While that gambit has failed for now, a temporary ceasefire with limited relief is the most Iran can expect. From Washington to Tel Aviv, too many powerful people are invested in senseless hegemony over a lasting peace.

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Despite repeatedly claiming that a peace deal with Iran is at hand, President Donald Trump is unwilling to finalize one. An agreement would cement the failure of Trump’s regime change war. It would also require recognizing Iran’s sovereign rights, including having an economy free of crushing US sanctions. Trump would also have to halt his Israeli ally’s continued attacks on southern Lebanon, which have killed more than 3,000 people and displaced more than 1.2 million since March. Israeli attacks on Gaza also continue daily, with no protest from Trump or his so-called “Board of Peace.”

Having promised to make a “final determination” on an Iran deal last week, the Trump administration can only stall with more deception. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress this week that “the war is over” even as US-Iran clashes continue and Gulf states absorb Iranian retaliation. Trump meanwhile feigned anger at his ally Benjamin Netanyahu for continuing his annihilation campaign in Lebanon, a clear Iranian red line for a lasting deal. On Monday, the White House fed Axios a story claiming Trump berated his Israeli counterpart “in an expletive-laden call.” The Trump team is copying the playbook honed by their predecessors in the Biden administration, who planted a similar story in the same outlet at least 25 times, according to a tally from media critic Adam Johnson, to mask their support for Netanyahu’s aggression.

Trump, like Biden before him, could simply tell Netanyahu to stop the bombing of Lebanon. Instead, every US action has been geared toward encouraging Israeli aggression. Netanyahu has barely tried to play along with the ruse, even telling CNBC on Wednesday: “We can disagree in the morning, and by the afternoon, we have common action.”

For now, that common action is causing massive civilian destruction in southern Lebanon in the hopes of weakening support for Hezbollah and laying the ground for a civil war. As it has since its founding in 1948, Israel is also carrying out plans to steal as much territory as it can under the guise of security concerns. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared in March that the war on Lebanon “needs to end with a different reality entirely” not only with Hezbollah “but also with the change of Israel’s borders.” These new borders, he added, “must be the Litani [River],” about 15% of Lebanese territory. Hezbollah’s resistance has made this impossible, so Israel has set the more modest goal of committing as much ethnic cleansing as it can.

Washington has backed this campaign not just militarily but diplomatically. On Wednesday, the State Department announced that it had brokered a new “ceasefire” in Lebanon – without the involvement of Hezbollah, the Lebanese force that Israel is fighting. US terms, accepted by the Lebanese government, make the ceasefire entirely “contingent on a complete cessation of Hizbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hizbollah operatives from the South Litani Sector.” It makes no demands on Israel, the occupying military with territorial designs on that region. Before that, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned multiple Lebanese government officials for trying to “preserve” Hezbollah’s “influence over key Lebanese state institutions.”

The US and Israel justify these measures by noting that the internationally recognized Lebanese government also wants Hezbollah’s disarmament. While there is a major constituency in Lebanon that would welcome this, an even larger number opposes the decades-long campaign of Israeli aggression and conquest in Lebanon that Hezbollah was founded to resist. And Hezbollah’s “influence” over the government does not just come with its military arsenal but via democracy, in a broader coalition that holds 62 seats in a 128-member parliament. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a member of the Hezbollah-allied Amal Movement, has guaranteed that Hezbollah would abide by any ceasefire premised on an Israeli withdrawal.

Unwilling to challenge the project of Greater Israel, Trump has reverted to issuing impossible demands and erratic threats. Late last month, Trump declared in a phone call with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey that it “should be mandatory” in an Iran peace deal for them to join the Abraham Accords, the Jared Kushner-designed project to normalize regional ties with Israel while ignoring Palestinian rights. Having paid a huge economic price for Trump’s war on Iran, all while witnessing his prioritization of Israel’s security over theirs, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in no mood to indulge his delusions. Trump has also threatened to bomb and sanction Oman, which angered Washington by maintaining a neutral stance throughout the war after trying, through mediation, to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Unless Trump can change course, he will remain stuck between a regime change war on Iran that he can’t win and a peace deal with Iran that he won’t make. And everyone in the region, above all Iranian, Lebanese, and Palestinian civilians, will be punished for having leaders who refuse illusory “ceasefires” imposed through wars of aggression.

by Dr. Brendan Whelan

The wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine, they say. A recent ruling from the Geneva-based Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT) ordered my former employer the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to reverse its decision to sanction me for alleged breaches of confidentiality and to pay damages. After six years of legal wrangling, the time-worn adage has rung true.

But it isn’t an absolute win or a victory in the true sense. My success at the ILOAT was a correction to a single wrongdoing in the context of a much larger continuing deception being perpetrated by the world’s chemical watchdog and Nobel Peace Laureate.

Neither was it my success. As much as anything, it was a triumph for those who, during the last eight years, have supported the inspectors who challenged the OPCW over its investigation into the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, in April 2018. I was part of that probe, and a witness to how it had been manipulated, ostensibly to serve a pre-ordained conclusion.

I am referring, of course, to people like Ambassador José Bustani, the first director general of the OPCW who has been steadfast in supporting the inspectors in our fight for transparency. And individuals like Dr Piers Robinson, former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck, and Professor Richard Falk the former UN special rapporteur for Palestine, who, together with Mr. Bustani, as directors of the BerlinGroup21, have been instrumental in advancing the quest for OPCW accountability.

Or journalists like Peter Hitchens, Tucker Carlson, Caitlin Johnstone, and, above all, Aaron Maté of The Grayzone who made the Douma story his and has been doggedly pursuing it for years, and without whom we inspectors would be voiceless. I include members of the Brussels Panel who were the first to take up the mantle of defending the inspectors. And the signatories of the Statement of Concern, like the four former OPCW team leaders, and musician and activist Roger Waters. Even some politicians who protested. Tulsi Gabbard and former Members of the European Parliament, Mick Wallace and Claire Daly, who risked their own re-election prospects by speaking out.

Without these people, who, for their stance, were targeted systematically with smears and ad hominem attacks on their integrity, the OPCW cover-up would have remained the dark secret of those who perpetrated it and those knowledgeable of it but too scared or unwilling to speak out.

Having said that, it should be stressed that the OPCW not only was, but still is an extraordinary body, staffed by consummate professionals who fervently believe in its mission. During the 2013-14 removal of Assad’s chemical weapons from Syria, in the midst of a raging civil war, it was the OPCW at its best, and the Nobel Peace Prize was a fitting tribute to its extraordinary legacy. It is an organisation I am proud to have served for nearly 17 years.

When I call out the OPCW in the context of the Douma scandal, I am referring to a very specific and tiny element within the Organisation that I believe has been coopted to serve the interests of powerful external actors. The sell-out is the machinations of just a few; individuals in key positions, who, for whatever motives, have embroiled this world-class body in a damning controversy through their willingness to even corrupt science itself.

Now finally, as a direct result of a legal case at an international Tribunal, their deceit, in a gratifying nod to poetic justice, has been confirmed, literally through the Organisation’s own admission.

The ILOAT ruling didn’t just vindicate me personally and those who stood behind the inspectors. While the focus of the ILOAT case was my unlawful sanctioning, the drawn-out legal process threw up some unexpected and damning admissions about the Douma probe.

Where years of public demands and outcry barely elicited a response, faced with a formal legal challenge the OPCW outed itself, perhaps inadvertently, by unequivocally confirming before the Tribunal the core allegations of the dissenting inspectors: that critical evidence in the Douma investigation was withheld; that the Organisation unfairly targeted dissenting inspectors with spurious claims of breaching confidentiality; and that management sidelined inspectors and refused to engage with them over their concerns.

The first two confirmations are now public. Now for the third.

Sounding the Alarm

On 1 March 2019, six months after I’d departed the organisation, the final report—concluding there were reasonable grounds to believe there had been a chlorine gas attack in Douma—was published by the OPCW. But—as has been widely reported—it lacked some critical findings.

I wrote to the OPCW Director-General (DG), Ambassador Fernando Arias, to express ‘some major concerns’ about the report. Specifically, I highlighted the omission of the expert opinion of German toxicologists who had ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death of more than 40 victims, as well as the excision of the fact that the levels of chlorinated chemicals (trichlorophenols) in environmental samples from the alleged crime scene were no different to what would be expected in the natural environment. Had this evidence been included, it would have turned around the conclusions of the Douma report.

Arias had not been the Director-General during much of the Douma investigation and I suspected he might have been kept in the dark about the attempts to censure and manipulate the initial report. ‘I fear you may not be aware of the details of what has been going on in the FFM and I am duty-bound to enlighten you on the facts’ I wrote Arias in March 2019. I protested that the final report had ‘shockingly omitted’ the German toxicologists’ findings. My letter, however, was not to challenge whether a chemical attack in Douma had necessarily happened or not. It was to call out the impropriety and scientific bias in the investigation into that allegation.

There was no reaction or even acknowledgement from the OPCW chief.

In April, I contacted a senior OPCW director to enlist her help in trying to get a private meeting with Arias. I even offered to fly to The Netherlands. But it was a no go. According to the OPCW Chief of Cabinet (CoC), an audience with the DG would be problematic. Because of protocols, I was told.

Instead, I could write again and mail the letter to the OPCW. And depending on the content, the CoC might consider allowing me a ‘possible’ meeting with the Director-General.

In other words, just to gain access to the DG, I would first have to be vetted by someone who had been the French representative to the OPCW at the time France joined the US in launching missiles on Syria in reprisal for the alleged Douma chemical attack. Facilitating an audience with the DG to express concern about a report that the belligerents saw as legitimizing those attacks, arguably presented an important conflict of interest.

Again, there was no reply from the Director-General.

The following month an engineering study of two industrial chlorine gas cylinders, which contradicted the official findings of the Douma report, was leaked from inside the OPCW. In response, the Director-General initiated a major inquiry.

A meeting with Arias was now more relevant than ever. Tired of being given what seemed like the proverbial run-around, I wrote to the senior director and demanded to speak with the DG “even if protocols have to be side-stepped or even trampled on.” Still no response, but I did get a letter from the Director-General on 7 June.

His vague and blithe response addressed none of the concerns I had raised. It did, however, make what appeared to be a veiled warning against any public revelations. ‘I take this opportunity to remind you of the obligations you undertook when you signed your secrecy agreement with the OPCW. I trust you will fulfill them,’ Arias replied.

Peer support

Despite Arias’ brushoff, given how senior OPCW aides had appeared to be shielding him from engaging directly with me, I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t being insulated from inconvenient facts by his close aides. I made, therefore, a last-ditch effort to get my concerns to him about the suppressed toxicology by other means.

I wrote an email to two senior OPCW colleagues who had been to Germany with me in June 2018 to meet the toxicologists. As scientists, they’d have the same concerns about the suppression of critical evidence. ‘I believe it is our professional and moral obligation to ensure the DG appreciates the gravity of the matter,’ I wrote.

‘[Do] not engage with this person’

The two officials forwarded the email to the CoC and got a reply that was disturbingly telling. I have only since learned of it because the OPCW submitted this correspondence to the Tribunal as part of its defense. ‘DG’s instructions are to not engage with this person,’ the CoC cautioned the two members of staff.

Moreover, my audacious ‘attempt of communication’ with the DG would, he said, be dealt with ‘at the appropriate level.’

And I was dealt with ‘appropriately’. That same day, I was notified that I was a suspect in the leaking of the engineering assessment to the internet, despite having parted with the organisation eight months earlier. Six months later, I was sanctioned by the Director-General for having supposedly contributed to the unauthorised leak and was barred for life from returning to the OPCW.

Framing my attempt to communicate with him as some kind of sinister ploy, in a briefing to OPCW Member States to report the findings of the leak investigation, the Director-General told international delegates that, ‘‘As late as August 2019, almost a year after he left the Organisation, Inspector B (me) contacted members of the Organisation to attempt to convince them to join his campaign to challenge the final Douma report.’’

Attack is the worst form of defense

When I challenged the sanction at the ILOAT, the portrayal—with falsehoods and disingenuous personal attacks—of me as a self-serving persistent nuisance to the Douma investigation became a core part of the OPCW’s defensive strategy.

‘In mid-July 2018, during the Executive Council Session of the OPCW … States Parties submitted questions to the Team Leader [about the Douma Interim Report]’, the OPCW told the Tribunal. ‘While the Team Leader was preparing responses to these questions, the Appellant came to the FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] offices every day demanding access to the States Parties’ questions and the Team Leader’s responses to those questions. The Team Leader did not give the Appellant access to the questions or his answers, as the Appellant had completed his hand-over of all materials relating to the Douma incident on 12 July 2018.’

The claim is a gross exaggeration: in reality, I made a single request to see the document. Moreover, as a team member and lead author of the interim report that States Parties were asking about, it was my right and obligation to know and participate in responding to those questions.

The OPCW’s attempt to justify my exclusion by implying I was no longer a member of the investigation team because I had ‘completed my hand-over … on 12 July 2018,’ (conveniently just days before the questions were submitted) relied on a false premise. I was still part of the investigation team at the time. The Director-General’s own response confirms that. ‘You remained part of the team until you completed the handover of the confidential material by 3 August 2018,’ the OPCW chief wrote me in his June 2019 letter.

All of this, therefore, serves to prove beyond doubt that the OPCW not only refused to engage with inspectors who challenged the integrity of the investigation after the publication of the final Douma Report, but was silencing dissent by sidelining them while they were still officially part of the investigation team.

In this light, the DG’s affirmation in his briefing to Member States rings pretty hollow. ‘The Secretariat always takes into account all information submitted and views exchanged,’ he told delegates. ‘The Douma investigation was no exception.’ Unless, of course, it’s a critical toxicological finding from German military experts or the views of dissenting inspectors.

Rising from the ashes

The ILOAT case has brought closure to the OPCW affair for me personally and an end to a long and often difficult process. But others will go on. BerlinGroup 21, will, no doubt, continue to seek accountability from the OPCW inside the corridors of power of the UN and national governments until José Bustani’s vision is fulfilled. “My hope is that the [O]rganisation can be resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be,” he said on behalf of the Brussels Panel.

We all share his hope.

Dr. Brendan Whelan, an organic chemist, served two stints at the Organisation for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons (OPCW) over more than 16 years. In 2018, he went to Syria as part of the Advance Team to investigate the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. He was responsible for the scientific planning and coordination of the mission, and was the chief author of the team’s investigation report.